Auger waited in the sanctuary of the secondary tunnel until a train passed by. The brightly lit carriages slammed past only inches from her face, Auger squinting against the warm slap of disturbed air. Another train roared through a couple of minutes later, its compartments empty except for a few commuters. The midday rush was over now, but the trains continued to run on the same schedule. She cursed the Métro system for its mindless dedication to efficiency.
There was no alternative: she would just have to make a run for it. She guessed that she would have a minute and a half to reach Cardinal Lemoine, two if she was lucky, and could only hope that she would not trip or find herself caught in the tunnel if a train arrived sooner than expected.
Just get it over with, Auger told herself.
She would make a dash for it as soon as the next train had passed through. She readied herself, anxious not to waste a second. But after a minute no train came, and then another minute passed, and then another. She waited in the tunnel for five minutes until she heard the approach of another train as it squealed and clattered towards her. In that five-minute interval she could easily have reached safety, but the next two trains arrived in rapid succession, almost nose to tail.
She would just have to take her chances.
Even as the red lights of the most recent train were disappearing into the tunnel, she was on her way.
She kept her back to the wall, her coat snagging on the tangled pipes and electrical conduits that ran along the tunnel. She held the suitcase as high as her strength allowed, trailing it behind her. It thumped and scraped against the wall as she moved. She had not tripped before, she told herself, and she had managed to make the distance in the time Aveling had given her. Nothing had changed, except that the punishment for even the slightest slip would be rather more severe. She could not afford to make a single mistake; one misplaced footstep and it was all over.
How long had it been now?
Down the tunnel, just around a shallow curve, she could make out the cold glow of Cardinal Lemoine station. It still seemed very far away, further than she could possibly cover in the minute or so that must be remaining. Auger panicked. Had she got turned around somehow? Was she in fact heading deeper into the tunnel, lured by the impossibly distant light of the next station down the line? The panic brought a lump to her throat and an appalling desire to turn around and head in the other direction.
No, she ordered herself sternly, just keep moving. The passing trains had confirmed that she was moving in the right direction. And even if this was the wrong direction, she was committed now. She had no better chance of making it to safety in the other direction than if she continued to press on the way she was going. And as she edged closer to the light, placing each foot with tense deliberation, she began to feel as if she was making slow but steady progress. The light was now much brighter, glancing off the courses of enamel tiles lining the mouth of the tunnel. She could make out people standing on the platform, none of whom had noticed her yet. The suitcase bumped against the wall behind her, dislodging a loose chip of tunnel cladding.
Then the people began to move, drifting to the edge of the platform as if by a collective decision. Almost as soon as she had noticed this, the brilliant headlights of a train hove into view. It came to a stop at the platform, paused for what seemed only a handful of seconds and then began moving in her direction.
She wasn’t going to make it.
As the train entered her stretch of tunnel, arcs danced between the electrified rails and the undercarriage of the train. The arcs were a cruel violet-blue, the colour of the wormhole mouth she had glimpsed earlier. The train lurched and swayed as it approached, seeming to fill the entire width of the tunnel. Auger wished she had paid more attention on the way in, checking the wall for nooks and crannies in which she might have taken shelter. Now all she could do was stand still and press herself against the wall as hard possible. Pipes and conduits dug into her spine like the torments of some apparatus of medieval justice. She pressed harder, trying to become part of the fabric of the wall, willing herself to melt into it like some camouflaged reptile. The train roared closer, rats scampering and garbage fluttering away in the air draught pushed before it. Surely, she thought, the driver must see her now. But the train kept coming, its steely roar filling her universe like a proclamation.
Auger closed her eyes. No sense in keeping them open until the last moment. The roar reached a crescendo, oil and dust hitting her lungs. She felt a violent jolt run through her left arm, as if the train had wrenched it from her shoulder. The roar continued, and then began to abate. Reverberations chased the train along the tunnel, and then all was quiet again.
Auger opened her eyes and dared to breathe. She was all right. Her arm was still attached, and it didn’t even feel dislocated. But the suitcase was lying half-open a dozen paces further back down the tunnel. The clean clothes she had packed for herself were draped over the nearest pair of rails, already crusted with filth. Two packets of counterfeit money lay between the tracks, while a third had ended up much further along the tunnel, at the limit of her torch’s beam.
Auger grabbed the nearest bundle of money, but some instinct told her to abandon everything else and get out of the tunnel as quickly as possible. She doubted the money would be there when she returned to the portal, but there was plenty more where it had come from. Someone—most probably a poorly paid Métro engineer—would be enjoying a generous bonus.
She reached the end of the tunnel just as the next train was slowing into Cardinal Lemoine. She lingered in the darkness until the train came to a stop and the passengers on the platform began to jostle for the best positions around the sliding doors. The driver picked up a newspaper from the top of his control panel and turned idly to the back page, taking a pencil from behind his ear to scribble something down.
Auger used his moment of inattention to spring up on to the platform. Most of the disembarking passengers had already left the train and and were spilling in ragged lines towards the exit. If she could only mingle with them, she thought she had a good chance of reaching daylight without anyone noticing that she had not in fact come off the train. But there was a wide expanse of open platform to cross before she reached the small crowd, and there were at least four seated bystanders she would have to pass by unnoticed.
The doors hissed shut and the train started moving. Auger walked as nonchalantly as she could along the platform, fixated on reaching the safety of the scurrying crowd. Once she was above ground she would be safe: just another woman fallen on hard times, someone to be actively ignored.
“Mademoiselle. This way please.” The Frenchman’s voice was calm but authoritative.
She looked around for the source and saw one of the seated individuals rising and moving towards her with a determined look in his eyes. He had been reading a newspaper but had left it on the bench, now revealing himself to be wearing the dark-blue uniform of a Métro official. He was jamming his hat on as he spoke.